Hard Vacuum Update 1

One of the main things I've been working on since entering Early Access is balance. At the moment it often feels like the player isn't in much danger so I've been working on improvements to the AI to make ships better at tracking targets, more accurate and a bit better at avoiding collisions. This should make combat more challenging and make your wingmen feel more useful. To balance the fact that you'll be getting hit more often shields have been introduced as a way to absorb a few hits before you start taking hull damage.

There has also been a modest increase to the speed and turn rates of all the ships. It may take some more tweaking to find the sweet spot where you feel manoeuvrable without it being over the top but for now I think it feels a little better and feels more viable to put power into different systems rather than just maxing thrusters for the increased turn rate.

Otherwise I have introduced some quality of life improvements such as manual axis calibration for gamepad and HOTAS users (available via the keybind menu), improvements to the loadout UI and giving motion controller users to access a few extra controls without having to take their hands from the sticks.

Details of changes and bug fixes below.

Shields

• All fighters now come equipped with shields which can absorb a few hits before breaking and leaving the hull vulnerable. Shields will recharge after a few seconds pass without being hit and adjusting power to shields will influence the shield health pool

• To accommodate shield controls in the cockpit, thrusters and engines are now combined under the engines switch, adjusting power to engines now affects speed and turn rate

HUD

• Added Shield and Hull meters to better track your health

• Added a message indicating when the ECM system is charging and a message showing the distance of incoming missiles

Ship AI

• Ships are better at tracking targets, avoiding collisions and have a higher chance of using missiles

Manual axis calibration

• Gamepad/HOTAS users can now manually calibrate the min/max, zero point and deadzone of their axes

Weapon descriptions

• On the loadout and trader menus weapons now have stats in addition to the written description

Lighting

• Changes have been made to the way scenes are lit that result in far fewer lightmap textures being needed. This should reduce loading times for people using HDDs and dramatically reduces the file size of the game.

Motion Controls

To improve ease of use for motion controller users alternative ways of activating some ship systems have been added

• Missiles can be fired by pulling the trigger of the controller holding the thrust joystick

• The throttle can be adjusted using the thumbstick/trackpad of the controller holding the thrust joystick

• Flight assist can be toggled from the controller holding the rotation joystick by pressing A/X on Rift, A on Index or trackpad West on Vive and WMR

General

• Speed and turn rates of all fighters increased

• The play area of most maps have been increased so people should find themselves up against the boundary less frequently

Bug Fixes

• Enemy turrets would not target friendly turrets

• ECM sound would carry on longer than it should

• Crash when jumping from spawn scene before wingmen initialised

• Resuming a Mercenary run on the final level in Arcade mode would load the wrong level

• Wingmen health was not being